The need to provide blast and projectile impact protection for military, security, and police forces is well known. Military personnel need lightweight, fast, and maneuverable vehicles, but the vehicle occupants also need to be protected to the maximum extent possible. Conventional materials that provide structural support for a vehicle, as well as some measure of ballistic protection, include metals such as Rolled Homogeneous Armor (RHA) steel and aluminum, for example AL 7039. Such materials are not optimal for making a vehicle body, hull, fuselage or the like that is lightweight, an important military requirement with respect to transport, operability and lifecycle costs of military vehicles. Vehicles made from such materials become even heavier when augmented with further survivability enhancement systems such as ceramic tiles applied to the outer surface.
Lightweight materials that can provide protection from ballistic projectiles include fibers layered with thermoplastic resins, such as polypropylene and polyethylene, and the like. Such fibers include E-glass and S-glass fibers, woven KEVLAR®, such as K760 or Hexform®, manufactured by Hexcel Corporation, non-woven Kevlar® fabric, manufactured by Polystrand Corporation. A significant drawback of such materials for military vehicles is cost—although fiber-reinforced plastic materials are lightweight, the unit cost tends to be significantly higher than heavier alternatives such as steel.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a lightweight and cost effective material that can provide both structural support for a vehicle, as well as blast and projectile impact protection.